


6 Texts I’m Not Sending You

by casdoms (moffwithhishead)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, Grieving Dean Winchester, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Post-Season/Series 15, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29442276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moffwithhishead/pseuds/casdoms
Summary: Inspired bythis poem.Dean finds himself staring at his phone or talking to no one more days than not, now.Chuck’s dead, everyone is back and fine, but Castiel is still… wherever he is.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 87
Collections: SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection





	6 Texts I’m Not Sending You

**Author's Note:**

> happy valentine's day, nerds! have some angst. 🖤

  1. _I miss the sound of your voice. Is it okay to say that?_



Dean finds himself staring at his phone or talking to no one more days than not, now.

Chuck’s dead, everyone is back and fine, but Castiel is still… wherever he is.

Jack hasn’t answered any of Dean’s calls yet, and that’s fine, he’s got bigger things to worry about, but still. He feels like he’s treading water on his best days, and sometimes it’s all the self-control he can muster to not call the kid and scream.

You raise a kid and what, huh? They just stop answering your calls once they move out?

He’s being selfish, he knows it, but damn it, Dean should be allowed to be selfish. If not now, when it’s the love of his life, when? When the hell can Dean Winchester be selfish?

“Hey Cas,” he sighs, gently tossing his phone at the pillows on the bed. “You got your ears on?”

Some small, dark and desperate part of Dean just wants to go down to the nearest crossroads and make a deal, but he won’t. He won’t because eventually, if Jack brings Cas back, he wants the rest of his life with him – not the next ten years.

“That show you like came on this morning,” Dean frowns at his hands. “The one about the different dog breeds? I tried to watch it, cause I miss you and stuff…” He sighs, looking around the room that feels too empty now, “I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws I guess, trying to hold on to anything that reminds me of you.”

Something buzzes down the hall and all of the air drains out of his lungs.

“I keep calling your phone… I know you’re not gonna answer, but it’s the only thing –“

It’s the only thing he’s got left that has Castiel’s voice on it. They’d gotten new phones just a couple days before the Empty took him, so he doesn’t even have any voicemails to listen to.

“Getting soft in my old age, I guess,” Dean chuckles, feeling a little embarrassed.

“I miss you.”

* * *

  1. _Is it also okay to say that I feel like I’m drowning? Both in overdramatic metaphors and in the absence of you? I feel like every day without you in it may as well have been spent at the bottom of my bathtub. I can’t hear anything. I can’t breathe right._



In the days after they beat Chuck, Dean tried to tell Sam about what happened and he just couldn’t get the words to come out right. Anything he could say was too much, too hard to talk about with his baby brother, but also nowhere near enough to explain how much it hurt.

How watching Cas disappear like that, right before him, with that fucking smile on his face, hurt worse than the hellhounds tearing into him.

He spent the first month walking around the bunker numb, like he wasn’t even really here, and the only real sign that Dean was alive was Miracle following him around. She was the only thing that kept Dean going at the beginning, and only because she insisted it be Dean who did everything for her. Sam had tried taking over the feeding, the walking, but every time he tried, she just ran away from him.

Dean cried in front of his brother for the first time in years, real crying, and it had been terrifying. The first day that he’d felt like he could maybe try to do this, try to be a person again, and some of Castiel’s spare clothes had ended up in his laundry pile.

Sam found him sobbing in the laundry room clutching an old suit jacket.

It’s nowhere near the first time that Dean’s lost Cas, not by a longshot, but it’s the first time that he knew Castiel loved him too. Somehow that makes it worse.

For years, Dean’s been saying that Castiel has a presence. It’s like the air moves to make room for him and it did it even when he was human, so it has nothing to do with his Grace. You can tell if Castiel has been in a room, and every single room in the bunker feels too still.

“It’s worse,” Dean admits, words slurring, one night. He’s sitting in the corner of the library, an empty bottle of whiskey by his side, when Eileen finds him. It takes her and Sam both to walk him back to his bedroom.

“’s worse,” he mumbles, his chin resting on his chest. “Feel like ‘m drownin, Sammy, ‘s worse.”

“I know, Dean,” Sam sighs, baring most of his brother’s weight. “It’ll be okay.”

They drop him onto his bed and Dean whines, pulling a pillow tight against his chest, “’s not ok. Feels like…” Eileen pulls the covers over him and some part of Dean’s brain seems to kick on at that because he pushes himself upright.

“Not worth it… ‘s not worth it, without him.”

Sam guides his brother to lay back on the bed, his heart breaking a little bit, “I know, buddy. I know.”

“I miss him,” Dean mumbles into his pillow. “Miss Cas.”

“Go to sleep, Dean.”

* * *

  1. _It took me a whole week to realize I was getting sick. I thought this is just what it must feel like to not be kissing you_.



Dean spends the second month feeling raw in every possible way.

Eileen drags him to urgent care at some point, when she catches him coughing multiple times in one day. She tells him that she doesn’t need to hear to know how bad that cough is.

He’s been doing better, trying to partake in life again, but his chest hurts and his head aches and he can’t stop coughing. It isn’t until Eileen stops him that he realizes that oh, yeah, he does feel sick.

It hadn’t felt that much different.

“Cas,” he groans around a cough, “Get back here, you asshole, I need you.”

He wouldn’t let Cas heal him even if he was here, but he doesn’t need to know that. He just wants the comfort of someone who isn’t his brother or Eileen. He wants to hear Castiel’s voice again, telling him stories, bringing him food. He wants all the things they never got to have, not really.

Bronchitis is a bitch, and Dean wonders if he’s dying.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Eileen grouses, bringing him another bowl of soup. “You’ll be better in no time, Dean.”

He doesn’t want to be better, not really. Maybe this is what he gets, what he deserves, for being too scared in that moment to say it back.

“Fuck off.”

* * *

  1. _I hate that you stopped reading my poems_.



“Cas, you got your ears on? …Probably not, huh? I don’t even know if you can hear prayers in there, but too bad if you can, cause I’m not going anywhere.”

Dean lays back on the roof of the bunker, watching a meteor shower, “Chuck is dead, Cas. I don’t know if I mentioned that before. I’ve been kind of a mess.” And that’s a generous way to describe it, how Dean’s been coping –

Which is to say, he hasn’t been coping.

“I know you’d want me to be happy, live a life or whatever, but I’m tired, man. I am so damn tired of living for other people. I don’t give a shit about anybody’s grand plan anymore, man, I just want to be a guy, you know?”

The crickets chirp around him and Dean sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, “That’s not true, I still want to help people. But Cas, I’m tired of being miserable…”

His voice cracks a little bit, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair, man, that you just… said it. Said it and left me here, alone, to pick up the pieces. I’m tired, man, and I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want you here. Please, Cas, I just want you here.”

There’s no real point in praying, he’s pretty sure that Cas is dead. It’s been two and a half months of praying and Dean hasn’t heard a damn thing from Cas or Jack, and at this point he kinda hates both of them.

Here he is, falling apart at the seams, and they’re just ignoring him.

“I don’t hate you,” he promises to no one. “I just don’t know how to do this, walk around like it’s normal, losing you.”

It feels like he lost a part of himself, but Dean’s too damn stubborn to say that out loud. He’s spent the past couple months walking around feeling like he’s missing a limb, like he lost an arm in a fight, but for some reason he’s the only person who can see that. Everybody keeps treating him like he’s fine, like he hasn’t lost everything, and it hurts too much to try and be a person.

But he’s trying, for Sam, for Eileen. For Cas, for Miracle.

“I need you. I’m not me without you.”

* * *

  1. _I’m having a lot of trouble kicking the BIG sads. I keep forgetting to eat. I spend too much time in the shower. I organize my shampoo bottles and knock them all over. I use every kind of soap that I own and I still don’t feel clean_.



Sam says he’s depressed.

Part of Dean wants to laugh, because he’s been depressed for years and gotten along better than this – this feels like being broken beyond repair. His brother had said something about Dean indulging in the grief, in his pain, but indulgence implies allowing yourself to do something.

Dean’s been trying to claw his way out of this for weeks and he keeps getting dragged back under.

He eats when Sam or Eileen bring him food, and then he only eats because they watch him. He makes them food when they ask, but he’s not hungry, and it’s fine. He’s fine.

The shooting range gets acquainted with Dean and his temper, and he wonders briefly if Jack even knows who he is anymore. If he checks up on them, if he cares, if he knows how bad Dean’s been hurting.

There’s much less alcohol in the bunker than there was before, and Dean notices it, but he doesn’t have the energy to go buy more. He just stays in the bunker, around the bunker, and can’t bring himself to leave yet. What if Cas comes back and he’s not here?

His showers go from daily and five minutes long, to every other day and an hour long. Dean just stands there under the spray, letting the water wash over him, his mind blank.

Sometimes if he’s not careful, when he sleeps or when he showers, his mind goes to other places. It’s like he’s outside of himself, watching himself, but he’s back in purgatory, fighting to find Cas. Or he’s back in the dungeon, watching Cas get grabbed by the Empty. Or he’s back in the library, their fight, the time he almost killed Cas, the time –

The water’s running cold now and Dean shivers, stepping out onto the towel.

His skin is raw more days than not, now, and his room has never been so clean. When everything’s spinning out of control, control what you can, right? Dean can’t even control himself, but he can clean.

That’s what he’s doing, washing his hands for the fifth time standing over the sink, when he hears it.

“Dean.”

* * *

  1. _I’m not gonna ask you to stay. I just want to_.



The air shifts, like it used to when he was here, and it feels like his soul is being electrocuted.

He ignores it, because maybe he’s going crazy but he’s not going to talk to ghosts. Not today.

His hands are dirty, but not really, and he can’t get them clean and it’s driving him crazy, the feel of them, the feel that the soap can’t even erase, the –

A hand settles on his shoulder, making him close his eyes on reflex.

“Dean, please look at me.”

He swallows, shaking his head, “You’re not real.”

Castiel’s laugh is quiet and breathy, maybe somewhere between terrified and disbelieving. It makes Dean’s chest ache, his hands clench under the water, wanting to grab and never let go.

Strong hands turn him, and he hears the sink turning off. The hands are back on him again, toweling off his own with quiet, gentle motions. It feels, absurdly, like all the air has left the room. The only sound in Dean’s ears are two people breathing, but he can’t open, not yet.

“Dean,” Castiel breathes out his name, squeezing their hands together. “Please look at me.”

His eyes open without his permission, and Cas is there. He’s right there, and he’s real, and his eyes are the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. One hand comes up to settle on his cheek and Dean’s helpless to do anything except lean into it.

Maybe he’s frozen in fear, maybe he’s frozen in awe, maybe he’s just fully lost his mind.

“It’s me,” Castiel promises, his smile kind. “I’m real. I’m really here.”

Dean opens his mouth to say something but no words come out – nothing feels like enough.

“I heard your prayers…” Castiel presses their foreheads together, “Jack got me out.”

There’re a million and one things that Dean could say to any of this, but his brain just keeps getting stuck on threes. _I love you_. _Will you stay_. _Don’t leave me_. _I need you_. _Please don’t leave_.

“Please,” is what he chokes out instead. He tries to say more, tries to beg for something, but the words die at the back of his throat around a sob.

“Anything,” Castiel promises him. “Anything, Dean. I love you, I love you, I love you too.”

His hands find Castiel’s wrists and cling to them, pulling them against his chest. His voice isn’t working, nothing is enough, nothing feels like enough, and he just needs, he needs –

“I’m here.” An angel making a promise he’s asked for a thousand times before, but for once it feels like enough.

“I’m here.”

* * *

  1. _February 14, 2021_



Dean has been watching Castiel sleep for hours.

Because that’s something he does now, will do for the rest of their lives. Castiel sleeps, and he sleeps soundly, if not a little loudly. It makes Dean’s heart do this thing that reminds him of all the times deities tried to destroy him.

He still can’t believe that Cas is here. Cas is home.

One of his hands traces over the lines on Castiel’s sleeping face, his heart stuttering in his chest at the realization of what they mean. Those laugh lines mean that Castiel has been happy, has lived a good life, has had things to smile and laugh about.

They also mean that Castiel is human, and Dean’s not sure whether he should laugh or cry.

Castiel’s eyes blink open, the small pout on his face not dissipating. He doesn’t say anything, just watches as Dean traces over his face, presses a kiss to his palm when it gets close enough.

“Hey,” Dean whispers eventually, finally meeting his eyes across the pillows.

“Good morning, Dean,” Castiel whispers back, bringing Dean’s hand up to his mouth to kiss.

Again, that bone deep ache hits him square in the chest. Fuck, he loves him.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Cas.”

Castiel’s smile is blinding, and Dean finds himself happily drowning in it.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I miss the sound of your voice. Is it okay to say that?
> 
> 2\. Is it also okay to say that I feel like I’m drowning? Both in overdramatic metaphors and in the absence of you? I feel like every day without you in it may as well have been spent at the bottom of my bathtub. I can’t hear anything. I can’t breathe right.
> 
> 3\. It took me a whole week to realize I was getting sick. I thought this is just what it must feel like to not be kissing you.
> 
> 4\. I hate that you stopped reading my poems.
> 
> 5\. I’m having a lot of trouble kicking the BIG sads. I keep forgetting to eat. I spend too much time in the shower. I organize my shampoo bottles and knock them all over. I use every kind of soap that I own and I still don’t feel clean.
> 
> 6\. I’m not gonna ask you to stay. I just want to. 
> 
> “6 Texts I’m Not Sending You” Trista Mateer


End file.
